The present invention relates to an apparatus for manipulating nests, or skeins, of pasta, and more particularly relates to such an apparatus for automatically manipulating pasta nests from drying frames and inserting them into packaging containers.
Apparatus are known for the industrial production of pasta in the form of tagliatelle, fettucini and the like; such apparatus consists essentially of extrusion mouths against which the pasta is pressed by screws in order to thus be formed into sheets, which then fall onto parallel knives that divide the sheets into strips, which are then caused to descend within parallel vertical cylinders that act as a mold for accumulation, by circumferentially delimiting the deposit on support planes. The lower part of such mold cylinders are vertically moveable to permit the transfer of the accumulations thus formed, constituting the so-called nests or skeins, by sliding of the support planes, and the formation of new accumulations on a subsequent point thereof, and so on.
Such support planes are formed of fine mesh nets stretched within quadrangular frames, caused to move and stop in succession below the mold cylinders to receive a plurality of successive rows of nests or skeins, and then sent consecutively within forced-air circulation chambers in order to be transferred vertically and horizontally there in succession or piled up one after the other, each in this way passing through a plurality of successive piles up to the exit so that during the stay within such chamber the pasta is dried, emerging ready for packaging, which is effected within containers or jars.
In accordance with prior art, the removal of the nests, or skeins, from the frames, coming from the drying chamber, for insertion in the packaging containers is effected manually; more specifically, the frames are inclined on one side, at the same time being imparted vibrations so that the nests slide off them onto conveyor belts from which operators manually remove them in order to insert them into the packaging containers.
The disadvantages of such last production phase in terms of cost for operating personnel are apparent.
Less apparent, but even more disadvantageous, are the drawbacks of this manual technique in terms of loss of product due to manual withdrawal and handling; in this way, in fact, a substantial quantity of skeined delicate strips or strings breaks up, remaining on the removal supports and thus constituting a scrap quantifiable in a percentage of 15 to 20% of the upstream production.
A main object of the present invention is, therefore, to provide an apparatus that is suitable for effecting automatic removal of the nests, or skeins, of pasta from drying frames and insertion thereof into packaging containers without the intervention of human labor.
Another object of the present invention is to achieve the above purpose by an apparatus tat handles the nests, or skeins, of pasta as delicately as possible, without subjecting them to any relatively rough impact, so as to avoid their breaking up and the forming of waste, and however inserting also the remaining reduced waste into the package.
Still another object of the present invention is to attain the above objects through an apparatus that can furthermore be adapted to existing production lines and in particular, which, while providing drying frames modified in their conformation by the requirements of automatic discharge of them, permits their design, however, as suitable to be stacked and transferred, particularly in pre-existing drying chambers, without any drawback or slowdown in production.
Another object of the present invention is to achieve the above objects through a simple and effective apparatus that is reliable in operation and of relatively low cost, with due consideration of the results obtained in practice with it.
The foregoing and still other objects are all achieved by an apparatus for automatic removal of nests, or skeins, of pasta, for instance tagliatelle, lasagna or the like, from drying frames and insertion thereof into packaging containers in accordance with the present invention; such apparatus comprising a station for a checkerboard alignment of groups of the nests on the frames by descent of check sides and packaging brushes, in order to create between such groups parallel channels where, in a second station, transfer brushes are introduced in a succession of rows of the groups outside the frames, which for this purpose are without lateral raised edges, on lateral coplanar flap boards with a trap below to which the packaging containers are caused to pass one after the other.